No One to Blame but Yourself
Posted On: 2009-05-25
Well that was a rather wild and unpleasant weekend that just zoomed past. Late last week just south of here there was some nasty flooding and it was a good time not to have to travel. Then Saturday morning dawned and had all the promise of a beautiful day ... until a storm weather alert heralded the arrival of some big winds and big waves and more rain.
Needless to say, we did not head down to the beach at all this weekend. It was just one of those times when it was more fun to stay inside. Let's hope that your weekend was better than ours ... especially if you're in the United States where you have a long weekend.
Last week another web designer - a rank beginner - approached me for some advice on hosting. They had built a site for a client and now they were looking for some hosting for the site and because they knew that my business offered mainstream hosting they thought I could give them some advice that would be helpful.
This person has done some work for me in the past so I was happy to offer all the advice I could. Of course I offered him some hosting but I also suggested some alternatives.
Unfortunately though the other designer chose to ignore my advice and go with a rather cheap, low-bandwidth, hosting package for their client's site. That was fine by me, I figured that he had more knowledge about his client's requirements than he had passed on to me and so he must have made a sound decision based on all the information he had.
Yesterday it became apparent that he had made a decision based on nothing relevant at all. He hit me up asking for help because he had just uploaded his client's site and was in the middle of testing it when he ran out of bandwidth. Yes, that's right, in just testing the site he managed to exceed the hosting plan's bandwidth allowance and the site was no longer visible.
It seems that even though he was well aware that the site he was building included a number of 10 megabyte movie files he hadn't bothered to take those into account when he was thinking about the bandwidth that he would need ... if he bothered to think about that at all. Now he's in a real pickle because the site's offline and he's got to go to his client and tell them that he made a very dumb mistake.
Steve got angry that someone could be given some sound advice and then ignore it all and so cost his client money while I just laughed. If you're dumb enough to ask for advice and then ignore what you get from people with way more experience than you have then you deserve whatever happens to you.
And that's the way it is folks ... if you're a newbie to this industry and you hit the boards asking for advice then you have no one to blame but yourself if you don't take it and your business goes down the toilet because you didn't listen.
It's an immutable fact of life for any business person, you ultimately are the captain of your own fate and you are the one who has the final say in whether your business succeeds or fails. If you go looking for advice and then don't take it when it's given by people who are more experienced than you then it's not their fault when your business fails.
At the same time, if they give you advice that turns out to be wrong and your business fails then, once again, the failure is ultimately down to you. Now that may sound a little unfair but that's life, it's your business and it's up to you to make the decisions that can lead to success or failure. It's also up to you to choose who you listen to and then listen carefully to what they might tell you.
Does all that sound like you could find yourself in the position of being damned if you do and damned if you don't? Welcome to life as a small business person, that's just the way it is ... even here in online adult.
You are running a small business that has all the potential to fail as any other small business has. In many ways you have just as much chance of succeeding or failing as the next affiliate marketer has and if you do fail you have no one to blame but yourself.
However, you would be foolish to totally ignore any sound advice you received from people who know much more than you do. If you doubt the advice you're given then test it ... but don't just ignore it completely and then come begging for help because it mightn't be there the second time around.